CONVENOR : Martyn Lyons, School of History, UNSW, Sydney, Australia 2052

Encouraged by the success of this venture at the last ISSEI meeting in Utrecht, I am organising another workshop on the History of the Book and the History of Reading at this large, multi-disciplinary conference to be held in Haifa in August 1998. I would now like to invite proposals for papers. I am especially (but not exclusively) interested in including in our discussions papers dealing with the history of the reading experience, and with Europe in the 19th century.

I hope as always that our panel will reflect the full scope of l'histoire du livre as it has developed to the present. Papers may treat the history of publishing and printing. They may also reflect recent research on the dissemination of literature, including for example the history of book clubs, lending libraries and retail bookselling. At the same time, we should have an opportunity to focus on the reader and on the reception of texts. One approach to this is to analyse the transformations of a particular text and its accompanying illustrations; another may be to assess the reading responses of one individual reader, or of a community of readers. I encourage a variety of approaches, to show the range of possibilities open to the historian of European print culture.

Papers will be presented, rather than read, and to make this possible I will distribute them to participants in advance. Participants will probably have between 15 and 20 minutes to introduce their papers, depending on how much time we are allotted.

The vast majority of proceedings in ISSEI conference are in English, but at this workshop, contributions in either French or English are welcome.

Papers should not exceed 3000 words in length, or ten double-spaced A4 pages.

Please send me the provisional title of your proposed paper as soon as possible.

An ABSTRACT of about 200 words should reach me by 1 OCTOBER 1997.

A copy of THE PAPER hould reach me by 31 MARCH 1998.

It will eventually be my responsibility as Convenor to recommend and edit a selection of papers for publication in the conference proceedings.

Please communicate with the Conference Chair on all matters regarding the organisation of the conference, including registration, accommodation, etc. Please note that any inquiries about possible financial assistance should be addressed not to myself, but to the conference administration.

The addresses you need are:

Workshop Convenor :
Associate Professor Martyn Lyons
School of History,
University of New South Wales,
Sydney 2052, Australia
Fax : +61 2 9660 3312

Conference Organiser:
Professor Ezra Talmor,
Kibbutz Nachshonim,
D.N.Mercaz,
73190 Israel,
Phone : +972 3 9386445
Fax : +972 3 9024402

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Martyn Lyons
University of New South Wales
Email: M.Lyons@unsw.edu.au